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MRSA Bug Jumped from Cattle to Humans 40 Years Ago

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Researchers report that a strain of bacteria that causes skin and soft tissue infections in humans originally came from cattle. The scientists, whose study will be published in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, conducted the genetic analysis of strains of Staphylococcus aureus known as CC97. They note that these strains developed resistance to methicillin after they crossed over into humans around 40 years ago.

Today, methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) strain CC97 is an emerging human pathogen in Europe, North and South America, Africa, and Asia. The findings highlight the potential for cows to serve as a reservoir for bacteria with the capacity for pandemic spread in humans, explain the investigators.

The team sequenced the genomes of 43 different CC97 isolates from humans, cattle, and other animals, and plotted their genetic relationships in a phylogenetic tree. Corresponding author Ross Fitzgerald, Ph.D., of the Roslin Institute and the University of Edinburgh, says strains of CC97 found in cows appear to be the ancestors of CC97 strains from humans.

“Bovine strains seemed to occupy deeper parts of the phylogenetic tree. They were closer to the root than the human strains. This led us to conclude that the strains infecting humans originated in cows and that they had evolved from bovine to human host jumps,” explains Dr. Fitzgerald.

Although the CC97 strains from animals were quite genetically diverse, the human isolates cluster together in two tight, distinct “clades,” or relatedness groups, indicating that S. aureus CC97 in cattle crossed over into humans on two separate occasions. Using mutation rates as a molecular clock, the authors determined that the ancestor of clade A jumped from a bovine host to humans between 1894 and 1977 and that the ancestor of clade B made the jump between 1938 and 1966.

After they made the jump, the human CC97 strains acquired some new capabilities, says Fitzgerald, thanks to genes encoded on mobile genetic elements.

“It seems like these elements, such as pathogenicity islands, phages, and plasmids, are important in order for the bacterium to adapt to different host species,” says Fitzgerald. “The reverse is true as well: the bovine strains have their own mobile genetic elements.”

Perhaps the most problematic new capability the human strains acquired is the ability to resist methicillin, an important antibiotic for fighting staphylococcal infections. Only human strains of CC97 were able to resist the drug, which indicates that the bacteria acquired resistance after they crossed over into humans, presumably through exposure to antibiotics prescribed for treating human infections.

Moving forward, Dr. Fitzgerald says he and his colleagues plan to widen the investigation. “We have a relatively small sample size, and the findings are robust, but we want to extend the study now to include a greater number of clones to get a bigger picture of what's going on across the S. aureus species,” he continues.

A broader variety of S. aureus strains from a wider number of locations and hosts and a longer period of time should allow the team to better pinpoint the timing and circumstances of the host jump events. “Understanding how and when MRSA has crossed over from other species in the past can help us to put the brakes on these crossovers in the future and hopefully prevent the birth of the next pandemic S. aureus strain,” says Dr. Fitzgerald.

Readers' Comments

Posted 08/14/2013 by William O'Connor

You misrepresent what these geneticists accomplished. They demonstrated that a strain of staphlococcus aureus jumped from cattle to humans. MRSA did not accomplish that feat. MRSA emerged long after the interspecies "jump" when certain strains were "unnaturally selected" (by hospital antibiotic usage patterns) for their antimicrobial resistances. Those strains that were capable of developing resistances were preferentially selected to the exclusion of those strains which did not have that capacity. The case can be made that MRSA was inadvertently developed in the early 1980's when multiple antibiotics were used in patients with AIDS who did not have the ability to recover from S. Aureus infections and were maintained on Methicillin for long enough periods for the bacteria to evolve a resistance to it. Once created through this selective breeding program, it colonized the hospitals and spread from the patients with nosocomial infections to the community. Blaming our bovine brethren detracts from the blatantly bungled management of the AIDS epidemic.

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